Another note on defending the USSR:

Let me put in a note about another aspect of the fall of Communism. Many people on “my side” have suggested that the fall of Communism tells us something meaningful about the feasibility of American-style leftism or Western European-style social democracy — either that it should make liberals revise their predictions of the economic impact of their proposals, or that it should make liberals think twice about the ethics of their philosophy. I think that the fall of Communism tells us very little directly on either of these points.